


My Only Sunshine: A Voice in the Light

by yodelingintothevoid



Series: My Only Sunshine [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, after-run recovery, no spoilers after S1E7, post-A Voice In The Dark, slight a voice in the dark spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yodelingintothevoid/pseuds/yodelingintothevoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Runner 5 can't sleep after sustaining injuries during her race back to Abel after A Voice In The Dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Only Sunshine: A Voice in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Excerpt one shot pulled from My Only Sunshine, an extended Five/Sam work
> 
> (Female Five, Sam/5 relationship or friendship, one-shot, spoiler-free fluff)

Runner Five's first major battle occurred just weeks after her arrival at the Township. Panic and bullets and shouting in the dark. Plummeting injured through the blackness towards an unsteady red light at the top of the tower. Falling through the gates just before midnight. After a hurried sterilization and health screen, Maxine had finally allowed her to fall into a cot to sleep.

Hours later, she lurched awake in the darkness. The cold closed around her bare shoulders like clammy fingers as she bent double, fighting to calm her breathing. Five pulled the scant blanket up around her shoulders and shuddered heavily, as if the motion could force warmth back under her skin. Slowly, as her frantic fingers rubbed up and down her arms, her body temperature rose, and with it the pain in her feet and ankles. Hot, sputtering pain lanced through her torn-up feet, her skin butchered by hours of chafing from wet shoes.

She slid her hands down to the bandages around her feet and tried to lay down again, stringing the blanket over as much of her body as it would cover as hot tears squeezed out of her eyes: a waste of warmth and water.

The night was stretching on and on all she wanted was a warm and empty unconsciousness, but she knew that sleep would only come with nightmares. Visions blurring with memories of screaming in pain into the silent trees. Alone in the silence.

She lay listening to the silence of the township, and a sickness of fear grew and burned in her stomach. In just moments, she would pass out again and then she would be out in the wilderness again, lost in her mind.

Fumbling for the tiny emergency flashlight Dr. Myers had put by her bedside, she flicked it on swiftly, rebelliously, and shone it on the clock. It was 5:30. No one else was in the hospital that night, and the whole camp would be asleep. The whole camp except…

“Sam!!” she was ripped awake again minutes later by the sound of her own voice screaming his name. Her throat felt ragged from the force of fear behind that scream. Anything, anything to break the silence.

Her trembling hands clutching her shoulders, she pulled herself from the cot and stubbornly whispered. “Sam.”

The walk was agony on her bandaged, bloody feet. The wind outside the hospital whipped at her body and hair, still damp from the mandatory shower she had been given over five hours ago at her return to the township. But she set her jaw through the pain and cold and pushed on.

She slapped her palm up against the door of the coms shack and heard a rustling and shifting inside. “One moment!” Sam’s voice called out, and her whole body slumped towards the sound, pressing against the wood of the door as if magnetized by relief.

He pulled the door open seconds later and warmth pushed out from a small heater granted to those unlucky enough to be awake at such an hour. He was buried in a giant grey hoodie, his hair stuck up in an even more lopsided way than usual, and his mouth looked wet and swollen from the hot coffee he was slurping from a Garfield mug clutched in one hand. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked no more awake than Five felt. She staggered towards him, the tears beading in her eyes again suddenly drowning her usual stoicism.

“Hey, now, easy,” Sam exclaimed softly as he reached for her. “What are you doing here? I mean, I won’t pretend I’m not glad to see you… I’ve had such dreams since you got in that I wasn’t entirely sure that something terrible hadn’t happened to you after all. Here, now, it’s alright. Come sit on the couch.”

“Couch” was an ambitious title for the tiny ragged futon towards which he gestured, and he quickly scrambled to sweep armloads of papers and trash off the rough brown surface to the floor. Five remained near the doorway, swaying slightly.

“Here we are!” he exclaimed with forceful cheeriness, his usual sunny demeanor somewhat challenged by her unusual display of weakness. “Now it’s fit for a princess.” He glanced doubtfully at the unappealing surface and back to her. “I mean, it’s probably worth a lie down anyway. I rather hope you weren’t some kind of actual royalty, you know, before. I never did keep much notice of that stuff. But anyway, you’re a runner now, and only the best for our runners!”

She looked at the futon and back to him. “Can I sleep here?”

“O-of course!” he said. “If-if you like. But Dr. Myers may not be too pleased. I know she probably wants you where she can keep an eye on your feet. Open sores can lead to infection, you know. And it’s not extremely quiet in here, neither.”

“I keep having nightmares where – I’m out there – and everything’s gone quiet. I just – I want to be where I can hear your voice.”

She stumbled slightly then, and he grabbed her shoulders, lowering her to the couch. “Easy now Five! Of course you can stay here. I’ll fight off Dr. Myers myself if I have to. Well… no I won’t, I’m pretty sure she could take me in a fight. But you know Runner Eight will be heading out in a few moments on a supply run, so I can promise plenty of talking for a while as we get her briefed and out the gate.”

Sam grinned encouragingly down at her, running his fingers clumsily over her hair and then generously shrugged off his hoodie. “You’re so cold! Here – here put this on too. What? No, I’m fine! I’m tough as nails, you know, and I have a heater. And coffee! Now you go to sleep or Dr. Myers will staple my fingers together. That’s what she threatened to do, you know. If any of us bothered you. I wanted to see you before bed to make sure you were alright, but she guarded the door like an Angel of Eden. Anyway… I need to call up Runner Eight, so you get some sleep.”

He turned again to pick up his microphone and begin run procedures and she noticed how much skinnier he had become even in the few weeks she had known him. He was too young and healthy for such a transformation, but the Township was hungry and he was overly generous with giving away his rations.

His voice swung liltingly on the warm air as he talked, pushing his fingers through his thick mat of hair as he ran through the gate protocol and got Runner Eight safely out into the morning. Five wrapped her arms snugly around herself again, now encompassed in the blanket and his sweater, and even her face grew warm in the half-light of the little shack. And Sam’s voice carried her out to warm, sun-drenched dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an excerpt from a longer work. Go to http://archiveofourown.org/works/7233541/chapters/16420846 to read My Only Sunshine.


End file.
